Letters From the August 13-20, 2018, Issue

Letters From the August 13-20, 2018, Issue

Letters From the August 13-20, 2018, Issue

Reader interventions… Giant step…

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Reader Interventions

Re The Nation’s July 16/23 special issue, “Needed: A New Foreign Policy”: Truer words were never written. But there’s a puzzling aspect here as well. The one issue that has mobilized Americans politically today—immigration reform—appears only as a minor point. The growing inequality among nations, which is the ultimate cause of the immigration problem, is presented as an aspect of economic growth, or as a blot on our humanitarian values, and it’s both. But shouldn’t it be front and center? Only international measures can deal with it; Trump is so strikingly oblivious to its causes.
Peter Marcuse
santa barbara, calif.

Thank you for the valuable insights in your special foreign-policy issue. As someone who has worked alongside a few of the authors to press community and labor organizations to oppose the war in Iraq and the bloated, counterproductive US military budget, I have long been worried by our movement’s relative lack of attention to global workers’ issues.

Your authors wisely talk about the rise in inequality and its relationship to militarism, both at home and abroad. The growing resistance movement needs to understand these issues or we’ll continue to lose big portions of our base, such as people in marginal economic situations, to tantalizing demagogic, xenophobic, and racist appeals. One hundred years ago, labor was key to the broad opposition to World War I. We need those connections again.

Jeff Blum
new york city

Even in The Nation’s special foreign-policy issue, there is no mention of Palestine. How disheartening! US tax dollars fund Israel’s destruction of lives, dreams, the economy, the environment, and beauty in Palestine. How can you justify such a glaring omission? Yes, Robert Borosage mentions Trump’s move of the US embassy to Jerusalem, but he does not mention that this move is against international law. There needs to be context as well as urgency in supporting Palestine.
Elizabeth Smith
kansas city, mo.

Giant Steps

In “Wars Without End” [July 16/23], Andrew Bacevich concludes his fine critique of American militarism by asking where we can turn for guidance when it comes to transforming the war economy and producing a better life for all. By way of a partial answer, he reminds us of Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1967 speech decrying “the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism.” Then Bacevich asks who will bring Trump voters into “the fold” to join the battle against these triplets.

Let me suggest the renewed Poor People’s Campaign as one possible candidate. The effort has begun with organizing in 40 states, with an emphasis on the poor and the working class, and has added the struggle against “ecological devastation” to King’s triplets in its “national call for moral revival.”

Maynard Seider
philadelphia

We cannot back down

We now confront a second Trump presidency.

There’s not a moment to lose. We must harness our fears, our grief, and yes, our anger, to resist the dangerous policies Donald Trump will unleash on our country. We rededicate ourselves to our role as journalists and writers of principle and conscience.

Today, we also steel ourselves for the fight ahead. It will demand a fearless spirit, an informed mind, wise analysis, and humane resistance. We face the enactment of Project 2025, a far-right supreme court, political authoritarianism, increasing inequality and record homelessness, a looming climate crisis, and conflicts abroad. The Nation will expose and propose, nurture investigative reporting, and stand together as a community to keep hope and possibility alive. The Nation’s work will continue—as it has in good and not-so-good times—to develop alternative ideas and visions, to deepen our mission of truth-telling and deep reporting, and to further solidarity in a nation divided.

Armed with a remarkable 160 years of bold, independent journalism, our mandate today remains the same as when abolitionists first founded The Nation—to uphold the principles of democracy and freedom, serve as a beacon through the darkest days of resistance, and to envision and struggle for a brighter future.

The day is dark, the forces arrayed are tenacious, but as the late Nation editorial board member Toni Morrison wrote “No! This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”

I urge you to stand with The Nation and donate today.

Onwards,

Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editorial Director and Publisher, The Nation

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